The Immortal Circus: Final Act (Cirque des Immortels)

by Kahler, A. R.

  We pass by another alcove, this one holding a simple string of pearls.

  “Those were Marie Antoinette’s,” Mab says, almost sadly. “I told her that if she wanted to survive the revolution, she must keep them on at all times. She didn’t, of course. Mortals never do pay attention to what they’re told, and look what happens.” She gives me a knowing look. “I think you two would have gotten along quite well. You have her spark.”

  “Why are we here?” I ask again. This makes William shrink even more, as though me talking to Mab like an equal sends terror through his heart. But I'm tired of this fashion parade: my boyfriend is hostage, and my tent is under attack. Mab may have promised only a few moments would pass in the mortal world, but I don't trust her. I need to get back. Soon. “I don’t have time to talk about fashion, Mab. I need to learn how to kill a demon.”

  Mab’s smile doesn’t drop.

  “Fashion, like art, can build an age,” she says. “But it can also topple it. And the right fashion preserves it.”

  We pass more relics in silence—diamond tiaras and necklaces of wood and bone and raffia, scepters covered in sapphires and crude stone rings the color of dust. I don’t ask any more questions, and thankfully I don’t have long to wait. William stops beside a metal door. This one isn’t decorated like the one outside the tunnel—this one is heavy steel, pockmarked with rust and engraved with runes. There’s no handle and no hinges. Just a shadowed hole set at chest height, maybe eight inches deep.

  “What is it you’re seeking, my queen?” William asks. He fidgets with the belt around his waist, his fingers tracing over the multitude of leather pouches and hanging tools.

  “The Blood Autumn pendant,” she says.

  William visibly flinches.

  “What do you need with—”

  Mab clears her throat. William shuts up. Then he nods and mutters something to himself.

  “As you wish,” he says a bit louder.

  He pulls out a small graphite pencil from a pouch and then scribbles something on the back of his hand. More runes. That’s when I see, hidden through the soot, even more black marks traced over his knuckles and around his wrist. He shakily puts the pencil back into his pouch and clenches his marked fist. He takes a deep breath. Then he shoves his hand into the hole in the door and squeezes his eyes shut.

  Instantly, the hole grows teeth: jagged chunks of metal clamp around his wrist, trapping his hand inside. William hisses in pain as the runes across the door and along his spine glow gold. Then, a second later, the prongs retract and he withdraws his hand, giving it a shake. The red welts are already beginning to bruise.

  I don’t have time to feel bad for him: gears are clunking, and a moment later the door opens inward. The door is thick and covered in gears and deadbolts, but that’s not what’s making the noise. The shadowed room beyond is changing. Pieces of metal and slabs of stone click and join on clockwork arms, creating, before my very eyes, a staircase leading upward. My ears are filled with the whir of cogs and the sluggish tone of metal on stone. When the door fully opens, the last few pieces of the stairwell click into place and the room goes silent. Everything past the brass and stone stairwell is darkness—it could be rock wall, or it could be a void. It’s impossible to tell.

  “After you,” William says to Mab, but her hand is already on the banister. I’m right behind her.

  When William reaches the stairs, the door closes shut behind him and the tunnel is thrown into near darkness. The only light comes from the staircase itself—the banister glows with a dull brass light, and the steps are flecked with silver stars.

  I’m about ready to scream at Mab in frustration. I just need to get back. I need to save my troupe. Even a second lost could mean life or death. But I keep my mouth shut. Yelling at her would just lead to another monologue.

  After all the buildup, the room at the top is an immediate letdown.

  I was expecting crown jewels and sarcophagi, something ornate and old and absolutely priceless, but the room we enter looks like an abandoned attic. There are rows of shelves covered in boxes and blanketed with spiderwebs. Light comes from a flickering bulb in the ceiling—the first sign of electricity I’ve seen in all of Faerie—and the air is musty. Old. Another glance around and now I’m not so certain that this isn’t an attic somewhere. There’s an old mannequin in the corner, right beside a steamer trunk and a boarded-up window. The only thing about this place that mirrors the Winter Court is the air—it’s freezing up here, and I’m sorely tempted to grab the fur coat on the hook beside me. If only there was a way to ensure it wasn’t enchanted to, I don’t know, squeeze me to death.

  “Where are we?” I ask.

  “A little hut on Bolshevik Island,” Mab says. “Northern Russia.”

  “Someone lives here?”

  “Of course not,” she says. “Which makes it perfect.”

  William steps in front of us and rummages through one of the shelves, pulling down what looks like an old shoebox. He brushes a thick layer of dust from the top and hands it reverentially to Mab.

  She peels off the lid, and I crowd next to her, staring inside. The contents creep me out: old doll arms and buttons, metal jacks, and a few chewed-up toy soldiers. She rummages around and pulls out a tiny tin box. William takes the shoebox from her the moment she holds it out; her eyes are transfixed on the worn tin, her hand practically shaking. I can’t tell if it’s nerves or excitement, but the fact that it elicits this much emotion from her makes me shiver harder than the cold.

  She opens the tin.

  Inside is a pendant: a tiny silver wire cage no bigger than my thumb. Inside that is a tiny stone doll, intricate and the color of onyx.

  “That’s it?” I ask, the words escaping before I can stop them. “It’s so small.”

  “To see a world in a grain of sand, and a heaven in a wild flower, hold infinity in the palm of your hand, and eternity in an hour.” Mab looks at me. “Blake,” she says. “He was one of my favorites. Always begging to know more of my world. He got what he asked for, but it did make him a bit…touched. We brought him to Faerie near his death, so he could spend the rest of his days among our kind; perhaps, if you make it out of this alive, I’ll let you meet him.”

  She winks. Then she opens a tiny latch on the cage.

  “Hold out your hand,” she says. I do, palm up.

  “It’s time you learned about the Blood Autumn. It’s time you learned the truth about Lilith and how Kassia came to be.”

  She tips the cage over my hand. The obsidian doll tumbles onto my palm. The moment it touches my skin, my vision explodes in stars and darkness.

  Chapter Ten: Bedtime Story

  “Once upon a time,” Mab says, her voice the first thing that appears in the haze of magic, “there was a little girl named Lilith.”

  The fog clears, blackness churning into light, revealing a landscape in the grips of summer; everything is golden, from the amber light streaming down the verdant boughs to the grassy knoll we stand on. I glance over to Mab, who stands beside me in her black dress, the heavy fur collar now looking entirely out of place. It’s still freezing, of course, being an act of Mab's magic, but it doesn’t make her look any less strange. The pendant is warm in my hand; its heat makes another wave of goose bumps break out over my skin. There’s something so pastoral about this scene, so utterly innocent and perfect, that I’m creeped thoroughly the fuck out. I know how this goes: shit’s going to hit the fan.

  And so, when a little girl skips into the glade, my heart drops. Not just because it’s Lilith—wearing a simple white dress and looking, for the first time since I’ve known her, like a real little girl—but because I know she’s way too sweet for this to end well.

  “She was an innocent child,” Mab says. “Mortal, the daughter of a simple peasant farmer. There was no reason for her to be the chosen one, not really.” Mab steps over to the girl, who’s now sitting cross-legged in the grass and playing with a doll made of straw and fabric scr
aps. There’s a look on Mab’s face I’ve never seen before. At first, I can’t quite place it. Then I realize it’s the same look my mom gave me when tucking me in at night, ages ago, when my dad had just started drinking: Love. Love, mixed with a hint of regret. Mab kneels in front of Lilith and reaches out as though to play with her, or caress her face, or any number of motherly actions that make my heart break. Because that’s what Mab looks like in that moment: a mother. It’s not a look I ever thought I’d see on her.

  But that’s nothing compared to what that look does to me. I nearly buckle under the weight of missing. I’d been good at keeping it hidden, at forcing myself to be solid and stoic and independent; I’ve been doing it for years. Somehow, all of that shatters when I see Mab’s hand shake over Lilith’s image, like she knows—no matter how hard she tries—she’ll never be able to touch that little girl again. She’ll never be able to protect her.

  I nearly gasp at how much it hurts. At how much I miss my mom: I was that little girl. I was the princess who had to save herself.

  “She was pure. Too pure. And that was her downfall.” She sighs as though disgusted with herself and stands. She looks to the other side of the glade. A sparkle of light floats there, hovering like Tinkerbell, and I can practically hear its childish giggling and the sound of bells. Lilith hears it, too; she looks up to the light, the doll all but forgotten. Mab steps to the side as Lilith stands and makes a hesitant step toward the light.

  “It was an experiment,” Mab says. “A wager, between the Summer King and me. I never thought he would be brash enough to carry it out. It was the last time I underestimated his ruthlessness.”

  Lilith reaches one hand out to the faerie. Another ghost of a giggle weaves through the woods, this one tinged with menace.

  “What was the wager?” I ask, watching the faerie dance around Lilith’s head. The smile on the girl’s face is pure wonder and entirely alien to me.

  “He was always so noble, Oberon. Always the good one in the faerie tales. Truth be told, I think he was getting restless. Tired of his lot. I told him he didn’t have it in him, to be evil. He wasn’t persuasive enough, didn’t really embrace that whole dark side thing. He lived in the sunlight and I—a creature of shadows—lived a life unknowable to him. It’s such a grey area, good and bad, but I think he wanted to taste the fruits of my world. I bet him that he couldn’t turn an innocent’s heart. And oh, how wrong I was.”

  She begins to walk; I was so caught up in watching her speak I hadn’t even realized that Lilith was on the move, following the faerie deeper into the woods.

  We don’t go very far. I pass under the branches in time to see even more faeries descend on Lilith. They swarm around her like wasps, and I know that if I could hear her, she’d be screaming. Then there’s a flash of light, a stillness, and Lilith is gone.

  Mab glances at me and gives me a look that clearly asks if I want to see more.

  A part of me doesn’t. My heart still aches from the way she looked at Lilith, the sheer agony of knowing this was the last time she’d see the girl innocent and happy. But I didn’t come all this way for the abbreviated version. I swallow the nostalgia and nod.

  Suddenly, we’re standing in a field. Although the light is warm like in the mortal world, I know we’re in Oberon’s Kingdom. At first, I’m not entirely certain what I’m looking at. Oberon stands before a concrete box about the size of a small fridge. A host of Summer Fey flank him, all of them somber in their finest attire—feathers and vines and fabrics in every shade of brown and green. Oberon himself looks both pleased and sickened, like a twenty-one-year-old trying to convince himself he’s happy even though he just wants the birthday bender over.

  Mab is visibly slouching. She walks over to the concrete box and stares down into it. When I step up beside her, I realize it’s a coffin.

  The tiny faeries from before alight on the rim of the box, their glowing bodies looking out of place on the six-inch-thick walls. The interior is empty, but I have an idea of just what’s going to fit inside that small space. Oberon’s saying something I can’t hear; the way he’s bowing his antlered head, the way his hands are clasped before him, it looks like he’s giving the last rites. And that’s when she appears.

  She steps out from the host of Summer Fey, guided by two small wood nymphs with flowers in their long brown hair. Lilith looks like some dark-haired Alice in Wonderland, her plain white dress replaced with a blue frilled gown, her hair tied back in a light blue ribbon. Where she once held a straw doll, she now holds a stuffed black cat.

  The Fey guide her around to the other side of the casket, facing Oberon. He says something else that is lost to the amulet’s magic, but Mab speaks for him.

  “He’s saying that he is sorry,” she says. “But that the Courts of Summer and Winter have agreed: a mortal child shall be sacrificed. He can’t lie, of course, so he tells her that this is simply her destiny—a horrible twist to the truth, seeing as her destiny was to be the object of a stupid wager.”

  Lilith says something in return. Mab laughs, but it’s filled with sadness.

  “And she asks if she’s going to die. Oberon will promise her immortality. Again, a false truth; she will live forever, but not as she once was.”

  Mab goes silent when the two nymphs help Lilith into the crate. She steps inside willingly and curls into a tight ball, the cat clutched to her chest like an amulet. If she’s scared, she doesn’t show it; she acts impassively, like this is all just some game or dream. And who could blame her? She’s been kidnapped by faeries—you’d have to be insane to think you weren’t dreaming.

  Oberon waves his hand and a slab of concrete rises from the ground and slides on top of the crate. The faerie lights flutter away, dancing off in the breeze.

  “Why weren’t you there?” I ask. “Why didn’t you stop it?”

  “I didn’t know,” Mab says. And for the first time since I’ve known her, she sounds truly sad, a tinge of self-loathing to her words. “Oberon didn’t tell me what he had done until years after. I don’t think he wanted me interfering—and I would have interfered, to sabotage the bet if nothing else.” Like Oberon, it sounds like she’s trying to convince herself of this. I know that deep down, she wouldn’t have done this to win the wager—I think she actually would have rescued the girl out of kindness.

  What had she once said? She was a humanitarian at best?

  As she speaks, vines sprout from the ground and twine themselves around the box, wrapping it in a thick cocoon. Then it shifts and, inch by inch, the vines pull the box into the ground.

  “What’s he doing?” I ask. I take a step forward before realizing I can’t stop it, not now. This evil has already been done. “I thought he said he wouldn’t kill her?”

  “And he won’t,” Mab says. She watches Oberon and his host leave with an expression I can’t quite place. “He enchanted her coffin, but this is no sleeping beauty tale. The charms he placed within the stone will keep her alive forever—never hungry, never tired, never thirsty. It’s worse than stasis. She will be awake and aware for every second of her existence, her body never aging, never changing.” She looks from Oberon to the ground where the crate once was. A few saplings are already pushing through the soil, hiding the atrocity resting below our feet.

  “But why?” I ask. “What does this have to do with the wager?”

  When she looks at me, there’s a tear in the corner of her eye. She doesn’t wipe it away; it falls down her cheek and disappears into soil.

  “Because this is how you make a demon,” she says. “You take the heart of an innocent and you teach it hate.”

  The world around us begins to change—time speeds up as the sun sets and the moon rises, a cycle that repeats faster and faster until the light is a strobe.

  “But he went a step further than our bet. Much further. I don’t think he realized just how successful his experiment would be. The years turned, and with every passing moment, Lilith’s hurt and hatred grew stronger. I
t twisted her heart and twisted her being, made her burn from the inside out. You said you thought demons came from hell, and in a way you are correct: they are spawned from hell, but this is a personal hell, one they can never escape. But they will try. And try she did.”

  Time slows down. A thick moon hangs above us, the sky clear of clouds.

  The ground where Lilith was buried is dead, the trees stunted in spite of the lush growth encircling them. No grass, just dirt and shards of stone. It looks cursed. Before I can ask what she means, the ground beneath our feet rumbles. Trees topple—one falls atop Mab, and her image flickers out for a moment. She reappears just in time for the ground in front of us to crack. And then, like some horrible zombie flick, a hand pushes through the soil. Only, the grey flesh of this beast is wreathed in flame. Lilith grasps at the air, her hand curls into a fist. Then there’s an explosion of light and fire and dirt, and the magic fades.

  We stand in the attic room, my eyes still trying to adjust to the dimness after the shock of light. Whatever emotions Mab was wearing before are gone, replaced by her usual porcelain mask. William shuffles about in the corner, rummaging through an old curio.

  “What happened then?” I ask.

  “That was the Blood Autumn,” she says. “Lilith escaped, though the monster that stepped foot from that tomb was not the girl who went in. She didn’t remember her name, only knew her hatred for everything Fey—we were the ones who had captured and tortured her, after all. Rivers ran red with her rage. She spared no one, innocent or otherwise. My people called her Kassia, which in our tongue means the Endbringer. Eventually, Oberon and I pooled our resources and trapped her underground again.”

  “But she got out,” I say.

  “Not quite,” Mab says. Even though there’s a sly twist to her words, her expression is still blank. “I released her.”